Just like any big corporations out there, small businesses need to have an effective customer feedback mechanism in place. This is not only to maintain or improve customer satisfaction but it also feeds you with information such as what do your customers want from you.
In this blog post, I am going to lay down 5 steps that can help small business owners and entrepreneurs to establish an effective customer feedback mechanism in their ventures.
Step 1: Welcoming Feedback
You must be willing to listen to your customers if you want them to submit their feedback to you. Some traditional ways of welcoming feedback include placing a suggestion box on the help desk, conducting customer satisfaction surveys, having a complaint section on your site and so on.
First Time Customers’ Feedback
It is extremely important to know whether a new customer enjoyed their experience with you. Thus, tracking feedback from first time customers is a must. Feedback cards, with a discount offer that could only be redeemable after having the feedback section filled out, can be given to first time customers.
Using Social Media to Gather Feedback
Whether your company already has a social media or a web presence, you need to set up an online monitoring system comprising of tools such as Google Alerts, BackType, TweetBeep and others to gather feedbacks about your business that are posted online.
Step 2: Rank and Prioritize
If you serve a large customer base, you are probably going to get an influx of feedbacks. Rank them according to the degree of improvements required, the amount of benefits that an improvement will reap as well as the interest of that particular customer submitting the feedback.
For example, you definitely don’t want to delay the processing of feedbacks submitted by long time loyal customers. Also, pay particular attention to problems that are brought up by multiple customers.
Step 3: Solving the Highlighted Problems
Customer feedbacks may be positive or negative. Of course, it is always good to receive a positive one, which means that a customer is satisfied about the goods and services offered by your business.
However, for a negative feedback, you need to quickly rectify the issues specified by your customers as soon as possible. If there are no suggestions included in the feedback and you, as a small business owner, have no idea on how to deal with the problems, you can always contact the customers to get some input.
Step 4: Follow Up with Customers
Once a problem has been rectified, notify the customer who submitted the feedback about the improvements made and invite him/her to do business with you again to see whether if the previous problem still persist.
If they had a bad experience with you previously, incentivize them to try out your goods and services again. The incentives can be a free voucher or a free tour of your premise.
Often times, because you are being perceived by a business that cares, customers will provide more suggestions for improvements in the future. They might even tell people around them that you actually took notice of their feedback and there you go, free word of mouth marketing love!
Step 5: Notify Others About Improvements
It is always good to let your target market, prospects and customers know that improvements are constantly being carried out based on customer feedback.
Not only that this will help to create buzz around your market, it will also showcase your business as one that is constantly improving and listening to the needs of your customers. With that, more people are going to be doing business with you in the long run.
Share Your Stories on Customer Feedback
Do you have a customer feedback mechanism for your own small business? If yes, can you share with us some tactics that you think might be a good add-on to the steps above?
What are some of the amazing things that had happen to your business just because you listen to your customers?
Share your stories and thoughts with others by leaving a comment below. Your input is priceless for others.
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Photo Credits: Orange_Beard
